Venezuela To Help Cuba Restore Oil Facilities Destroyed by Fire

On Tuesday, Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro ordered Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami and PDVSA Oil Company President Asdrubal Chavez to support the reconstruction of the fire-ravaged supertanker base in Matanzas.

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"Cuba knows that it has our scientific-technical support and our engineers and workers... get in touch with the Cuban oil and energy authorities to start the design for the reconstruction of the supertanker yard in Matanzas," he said during a ceremony in in which the Bolivarian leader paid tribute to the Venezuelan firefighters who helped put out the fire in Cuba.

“Together again, we will recover what the fire took,” President Diaz-Canel said, admitting that the Bolivarian leader's words of solidarity filled him with emotion.

The fire in the Matanzas industrial park affected four tanks that contained 50,000 cubic meters of fuel for thermoelectric plants. It caused strong explosions with flames of several tens of meters and a column of toxic black smoke that reached Havana, 104 kilometers away.

The Matanzas fire left 2 Cubans dead and 14 people missing, most of whom are believed to be firefighters who died while performing their mission.

On Wednesday, the Cuban presidency announced that its officials are coordinating actions with the Red Cross and other international experts for the work of identifying the bone remains found in the accident area.

For days now, Cuban teams have been checking the place of the fire in search of bone fragments and personal belongings. So far, however, there are no official data on the number of bodies found.